They decided. The Organizing Committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Games (Cojop) of Paris 2024 and the local Tahitian authorities announced, Friday November 17 at 7 p.m., the construction, on the Teahupoo site, in Tahiti, which will host the surfing events next summer, a new judges’ tower. This will be “more sober and reduced in size and weight”promise the stakeholders.
For several weeks, the holding of the competition on the renowned Teahupoo site had been called into question following protests from part of the local population and environmental associations, who considered that the structure intended to accommodate the judges risked, during its installation, lasting damage to the coral reef. Surfers feared a change in the underwater relief likely to alter the wave. On Thursday, a petition launched against the construction of this tower had collected more than 162,000 signatures.
The new project “allows in particular to reduce the drilling depth of the foundations and to use a barge with a shallower draft for the work”, assures Paris 2024 in a press release.
“Reduce the drilling depth of foundations”
According to the organizers of the Games, the new aluminum tower will have the same surface area (150 square meters) and the same weight (9 tonnes) as the old wooden tower, assembled before the competition and dismantled afterwards. This “lightening work (…) will make it possible to reduce the drilling depth of the foundations”explains Paris 2024. These will be “located in an area with few corals”assures Cojop.
“The foundations will be inserted in the intervals of the existing plots: the [nouvelle] tower will therefore be located in exactly the same place as the old tower, it is specified in the press release. Furthermore, the new plots will allow the coral to settle and develop, as is already the case for the current foundations, and a cutting program will be carried out to accelerate this phenomenon. »
While hoping to maintain the event in Teahupoo, the president of French Polynesia, Moetai Brotherson, had considered, on November 10, moving the surfing event to another wave in Tahiti, a few dozen kilometers from Teahupoo . Thursday evening, interviewed by the local channel TNTV Tahiti Nui TélévisionMr. Brotherson had said that“an option, which [n’allait] obviously not to please everyone”had been retained, specifying that in the absence of a decision ” Games [iraient] elsewhere ” than in Tahiti.